A communication equipment with a spare path as shown in JP-A No. Hei-7(1995)-95132 can reduce overall power consumption in the equipment by lowering power consumption of the interface board for the spare path.
A method disclosed in RFC3473 describes a method for notifying equipments on whether a current path is in a main path or a spare path by utilizing a GMPLS (generalized multiprotocol label switching) signaling protocol.